18 Alison Bennett. Diplomatic Gifts

Diplomatic Gifts: Rethinking Colonial
Politics in Uganda through Objects

Alison Bennett
Abstract: This article examines the material underpinnings of the political diplomacy
pursued by Ugandan leaders towards European colonial figures in the late nine-
teenth century. Imperial historians have traditionally understood the institutional
processes of treaty-making, diplomacy and state administration as part of the work-
ings of the European “Official Mind.” As such, analyses have been overwhelmingly
based upon written colonial sources such as governmental papers. This article pro-
vides an alternative perspective on institutional life in Uganda by demonstrating
that material objects also served as sites of political praxis for both the governed
and those governing when exchanged in the form of a gift. The products of these
exchanges can be found in museums across Uganda, Kenya, and Britain. Their biog-
raphies shed important new light on the interactions between the material and
political worlds as well as between local leaders and the imperial state, yet they have
received little critical attention from historians. This article seeks to reinstate their
role into the political process, and in doing so, reconfigures our understanding
of these different imperial institutions.
Résumé: Cet article examine les fondements matériels de la diplomatie politique

menée par les dirigeants ougandais à l’égard des figures coloniales européennes à la
fin du XIXe siècle. Historiquement, les historiens impériaux ont compris les proces-
sus institutionnels de la conclusion des traités, de la diplomatie et de l’administration
publique comme faisant partie du fonctionnement de l’“Official Mind” européen.
À ce titre, les analyses se fondaient massivement sur des sources coloniales écrites
telles que les documents gouvernementaux. Cet article fournit une perspective
History in Africa, (2018), Page 1 of 28

Alison Bennett is a Collaborative Doctoral Award student in the History Department
at University College London and the Africa Department at the British Museum.
Her thesis examines the collections of East African objects housed in various
repositories across Britain, elsewhere in Europe, and East Africa. Sitting at the
intersection of imperial history, the history of collecting and East African studies,
it seeks to shed new light on the cultural histories of East Africa and British
imperialism during this time. E-mail: alison.bennett.14@ucl.ac.uk
© African Studies Association, 2018

doi:10.1017/hia.2018.5
1
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Newcastle University, on 13 May 2018 at 17:29:47, subject to the Cambridge Core terms
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/hia.2018.5
2 History in Africa
alternative sur la vie institutionnelle en Ouganda en démontrant que les objets

matériels, lorsqu’ils étaient échangés sous la forme d’un don, servaient aussi de
sites de pratique politique à la fois pour les gouvernés et les gouvernants. Les pro-
duits de ces échanges peuvent être trouvés dans des musées à travers l’Ouganda,
le Kenya et la Grande-Bretagne. Leurs biographies apportent un nouvel éclairage
important sur les interactions entre les mondes matériel et politique ainsi qu’entre
les dirigeants locaux et l’État impérial, mais ils ont reçu peu d’attention critique
de la part des historiens. Cet article cherche à réintégrer leur rôle dans le proces-
sus politique et, ce faisant, reconfigure notre compréhension de ces différentes
institutions impériales.
Introduction1
The Ugandan objects which reside in museums across Europe and East
Africa are extensive, diverse, and historically significant, yet also under-
researched and under-displayed. Objects from Uganda began to flow into
British museum collections from the late-nineteenth century with the
expansion of travel, trade, and knowledge networks. On moving into the
institutional space of the museum, these objects transformed into curios,
trophies, and anthropological specimens of a timeless and traditional
Ugandan culture. However, by the second half of the twentieth century,
anthropologists had increasingly distanced themselves from the material
culture of the colonial context in which their discipline had emerged.
As a direct result, ethnographic museums and their collections thus expe-
rienced something of an extended “identity crisis.”2
The emergence and development of “material culture studies” in
socio-cultural anthropology and archaeology in the late-twentieth century
brought museums and collections back in to academic focus. Museums
have similarly pursued new methodologies, questions, dialogues, and col-
laborations in order to find new “ways in” to their object collections. Thanks
to the increasingly interdisciplinary outlook of material culture studies and
museum scholarship, a growing body of historians has also begun to inte-
grate material culture and critical museological theory into their research
with significant results. This approach views the past as a tangible space,
1 I would like to thank staff at the British Museum, Pitt-Rivers Museum, Uganda
Museum, and Nairobi National Museum for allowing me access to their collections
and archives for this article. Thank you also to the archival staff at the Uganda
National Archives. The A.H.R.C Collaborative Doctoral Partnership and the Royal
Historical Society made my research in East Africa possible. Finally, I would like to
express my sincerest thanks to my doctoral supervisors, Margot Finn, John Giblin,
and Sarah Longair for their advice on this article which was first presented at the
Workshop on Emerging Approaches in Uganda Studies on 29 April 2017.
2 Clare Harris and Michael O’Hanlon, “The Future of the Ethnographic
Museum,” Anthropology Today 29–1 (2013), 8–12.
Diplomatic Gifts 3
and material cultures as representative of the changing interactions, values,

identities and politics which have occurred within it. Historians are increas-
ingly searching for different forms of agency embedded among the multi-
ple discursive and physical layers of objects and their associated archival
documentation which serve to disrupt, complicate, or add greater nuance to
the conventional colonial histories and narratives that once defined them.3
For example, research by Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles in Papua
New Guinea, Nicholas Thomas and Chris Wingfield in the Pacific, Claire
Wintle in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Christina Riggs in Egypt
has encouraged greater recognition of how local leaders, dealers, makers,
and consumers directed the practice of European ethnographic collecting
in the colonies, a domain which has traditionally been attributed to white,
European males.4 In turn, this research has helped to reframe our under-
standing of the complex nature of power in colonial relations.
Historians of Uganda have produced rich and important work on the
production of local oral and literary sources in the colonial period, but
there have been significantly fewer explorations of its material dimensions
outside of the work of archaeology. Andrew Reid has reflected upon the
potential of historical archaeology for examining more recent periods in
Ugandan history and the construction of historical memory.5 This article
situates itself among these wider discussions by arguing for a critical integra-
tion of object-based histories in the study of Uganda’s colonial past.
The colonial “gift” is an object category which appears across several
museum records for Ugandan collections. As both physical objects and
3 Historians engaging in this work often cite the theoretical framework
advocated by Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff in the seminal volume, The Social
Life of Things, in which the meanings imbued within objects are emblematic of the
different social, political, and economic contexts through which they move. Arjun
Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value;”
in: Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3–63; Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural
Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in: Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The
Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986), 64–91.
4 Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and
Colonial Change (Oxford: Berg, 2001); Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange,
Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press, 1991); Chris Wingfield, Karen Jacobs and Chantal Knowles (eds.), Trophies,
Relics and Curios? Missionary Heritage from Africa and the Pacific (Leiden: Sidestone
Press, 2015); Claire Wintle, Colonial Collecting and Display: Encounters with Material Cul-
ture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013); Christina
Riggs, “Shouldering the Past: Photography, Archaeology, and Collective Effort at the
Tomb of Tutankhamun,” History of Science 55–3 (2017), 336–363.
5 Andrew Reid, “Constructing History in Uganda,” Journal of African History
57–2 (2016), 195–207.
4 History in Africa
inter-personal acts, gifts provide an important window on the affective

interactions and the strategic methods enacted by both Europeans and
Ugandans in colonial relations. Items from Uganda found their way to
ethnographic museums via several different routes. At one end of the
spectrum, acquisition methods involved violent extraction through punitive
expeditions and coercion. At the other end sat an exchange economy
which involved both market relations and ostensibly altruistic sentiment.
This article focuses on the latter of these categories, but does not view
gift exchange in a straightforward way. While the capture and display of
war loot reflected violent and cultural control by British colonizers, gift
exchanges involved a quite different set of power relations between Ugandan
and British elites which set the tone for future relations and mediated
European access to knowledge.
Recent historical scholarship on imperial gifting in other regions
emphasizes the complex agencies of both parties involved in an exchange.
Natasha Eaton, for example, has found that the diplomatic gifting of por-
traiture in eighteenth-century India took on an important role in the colo-
nial encounter between senior figures in the Mughal and British states.
These exchanges involved intricate calculation, and objects exchanged in
the form of a “gift” created a space for negotiation and identity formation.6
Emma Martin finds that colonial gift exchange between elites in early
twentieth-century Tibet was central to the projection of desired “national”
identities by groups on either side of the exchange.7 Meanwhile, Zachary
Kingdon and Dmitri van den Bersselaar have studied five hundred objects
in the ethnology collection of the World Museum in Liverpool which were
gifted by almost eighty West African chiefs and educated elites between
1897 and 1916 via collector Arnold Ridyard (1853–1924).8 These studies
have all reconfigured the traditional museum gifting story in which non-
European actors are situated as mere intermediaries.
Gift-giving was also central to the encounter between Ugandans and
Europeans in the late-nineteenth century. Museum inventories and a wide
variety of written accounts ranging from letters to memoirs, and even
geographical reports, record the practice. Some descriptions are fleeting,
6 Natasha Eaton, “Between Mimesis and Alterity: Art, Gift, and Diplomacy
in Colonial India, 1770–1800,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46–4
(2004), 816–844.
7 Emma Martin, “Fit for a King? The Significance of a Gift Exchange between
the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and King George V,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
25–1 (2015), 71–98.
8 Zachary Kingdon and Dimitri van den Bersselaar, “Collecting Empire?
African Objects, West African Trade, and a Liverpool Museum,” in: Sheryllynne
Haggerty, Anthony Webster and Nicholas J. White (eds.), The Empire in One City?:
Liverpool’s Inconvenient Imperial Past (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2008), 100–123.
Diplomatic Gifts 5
while others recall the exchange of gifts in exhaustive detail. Gifting was a
consistent feature of the European travel narrative, and correspondence
and publications produced by Ugandans for European audiences also doc-
ument the giving and receiving of gifts. Yet this has not been the focus of
any sufficiently detailed analysis. As colonial gifts, these supposedly “pre-
modern” objects served as important sites of “modern” political praxis in
early imperial diplomacy for both colonizer and colonized. If we are to
fully understand the nature of diplomatic relations, we must therefore
acknowledge that the strategic deployment of the world of material things
was a key feature. Gifts were central to the establishment of elite relations
and identities. Gifting enabled local leaders to fashion a self-image through
their own auto-ethnographies and the gifts that they amassed from European
imperialists enabled them to form ethnographic collections and categori-
zations of their own.
The material gifts discussed in this paper were all deemed by the British
to be museum-worthy. But they were situated within a much wider system
of reciprocal exchange and negotiation which served to maintain relations
of power in colonial Uganda. The gift-economy also involved the circula-
tion of ammunition, livestock, foodstuffs, cloth, and land. There are files in
the Uganda National Archives specifically dedicated to these forms of gift
exchange between officials and “chiefs” in the early twentieth century, illus-
trating how deeply established the process had become to imperial political
relations.9 They also reveal the circulation and entanglement of both
“commodities” and crafted goods within a gift economy which was neither
simply “pre-modern” nor “modern” in the Maussian sense.10 The gift
economy between Muslim settlers and Ugandans requires further research,
as do the internal gifting networks and cultures constructed between
Ugandans themselves.11 In the precolonial period, Richard Reid has
demonstrated that the material basis of power was partly based upon the
9
See, for example: Uganda National Archives, Secretariat Papers, A43/204
“Presents to Acting Commissioner on Tour by Native Chiefs and Presents to
Chiefs from the Acting Commissioner.”
10 The distinction between the gift as an “archaic,” “primitive,” and “cere-
monial” form of exchange, and the commodity as a “modern” transaction employed

by “western” societies is most commonly attributed to Marcel Mauss. Mauss’s the-
ory has elicited much discussion, elaboration and critique among scholars. Marcel
Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London:
Routledge, 1990). This article, like other recent studies, seeks to move on from
this dichotomy. See also: Thomas, Entangled Objects, 7.
11 Although a later date, Jonathan Earle notes that Muslim supporters of
Muteesa II presented him with elaborate gifts on his return to Uganda to bolster
their image and position within the political landscape. Jonathon Earle, Colonial
Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 166.
6 History in Africa
concept of “reciprocity,” though the Ganda were, in large “unrestricted

by centralized political control.”12 This patron-client system allowed the
Kabaka (King) to exchange labor and taxation from chiefs in return for
land.13 At the other end of the spectrum were non-elite systems of gift
exchange, which also require further study.
The gifts and gift-giving explored in this article occupy two sections. The
first section examines some key examples of gift-giving in Uganda by Kabakas
(Kings) Mwanga (1868–1903) and Muteesa (1837–1884), Katikkiro (Prime
Minister) Mbaguta of Ankole, courtly princesses from the Kingdoms of
Bunyoro and Buganda, and men identified as “chiefs” from Usoga, the Nile
Province and Acholi. These case-studies illustrate the long history of gift
exchange with Europeans: from the arrival of missionaries in the 1870s, to
the early trade treaties with the Imperial British East Africa Company
(IBEAC), right through to the period of imperial administration in the first
half of the twentieth century. While the nature of these gifts evolved, gifting
as a process remained a key feature of diplomatic relations. Although there
was no single or pervasive gifting culture among all Ugandans, we can pick out
similarities and patterns. Gifts reinforced the image of the dynastic and ritual
authority of the Ugandan Kingdoms and their masculine material culture.
The giving of similar gifts to multiple people and institutions reinforced this
identity. But female members of the court were also involved in the
exchange of gifts. These instances provide important insights into the lesser
known rituals, regalia, and gender of the courts. We also find that some gifts
impressed more than others, and that there were consequences to an inap-
propriate gift. At other times, gifts communicated diplomacy when language
itself failed. For the historian plotting these histories, however, there is a
constant tension between what truly constituted a “gift” and what did not.
The fractured nature of museum records and the inevitable over-reliance on
colonial sources are important methodological issues in this context.
To help remedy this issue, the second half of this article zooms in on
one specific gift initiated by Katikkiro Sir Apolo Kaggwa (1864–1927) while
visiting Britain in 1902. The Europeans who transferred their objects from
the colonies to European museums often overshadow evidence of indige-
nous collectors and donors in the museum archive. Apolo Kaggwa not only
gave objects to the Uganda Museum, he also traveled to Britain and gave
his objects directly to various museums and individuals, documenting such
events in detail. Kaggwa’s gifts therefore allow us to read the museum archive
against the grain. They also speak to the spatial contingencies of gift-giving,
transnational networks of power, methods of self-representation, and the
cultural creation of historical memory and identity in Uganda. All of these
12 Richard Reid, Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda (Athens OH: Ohio Uni-
versity Press, 2003), 14.
13 Reid, Political Power, 14.
Diplomatic Gifts 7
hitherto unexplored sources and examples demonstrate the complex strat-

egies and performances of early colonial encounters, and speak to wider
historiographical efforts which seek to understand the close entanglement
of culture and politics in the colonial period.14
Early Colonial Gift Exchange in Uganda
The objects listed in Table 1 are gifts that Sir Frederick Jackson received
during his time working for the IBEAC and the colonial government in
Uganda and British East Africa. These objects are part of larger collection
of almost five-hundred objects which formed the foundations of the
Nairobi National Museum in the late nineteenth century.15 The items
that are listed in the Museum inventory can be traced back to Kabaka
Mwanga, Katikkiro Apolo Kaggwa, and a group loosely labelled as
“Ugandan Chiefs.” We also find gifts from “Mandara of Moshi,” “Micreali
of Kilimanjaro,” and “Leitongwa of the Nandi” alerting us that gifting
was not a practice limited to one area, but rather, a common ritual in
the encounter between Jackson and leaders across Uganda and Kenya.
A published account of his time in East Africa provides rich information
about other gifts given by “Chief Mbaguta, the Katikiro of Ankoli,”
“Chief Wakoli of Usoga,” and leaders from the Maasai. Jackson noted in
this account that gift-giving was a key feature of the formalities of vis-
iting a place, and on the eve of his first major caravan expedition into
Uganda, the IBEAC directors wrote to Jackson with instructions, empha-
sising that he should give gifts “immediately to chiefs” to establish good
relations.16
Between 1886 and 1895, Jackson traveled with his IBEAC caravan from
the coast into the interior of British East Africa to make treaties. In 1899,
he took an unexpected detour into Uganda when he received a treaty
request from Kabaka Mwanga. During these treaty expeditions, Micreali,
Mandara, and Mwanga all presented him with spears. Jackson was a hunting
man and would have valued these gifts. Museum records reveal that he
acquired many hunting weapons during his time in East Africa. Spears were
also popular European decorative devices. Photographs often depicted the
careful arrangement of spears on walls as trophies. In the museum, they
were specimens of “primitive” or “savage” warfare. But as Richard Reid
notes, in Buganda, spears and shields were – as in West Africa – “cultural
symbols, or standards of office and honour,” and to quote Speke, “the Uganda
14 Dane Kennedy, “Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory,” Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History 24–3 (1996), 345–363.

15 Nairobi National Museum, Frederick Jackson Collection, 1886.1 – 1906.300.
16 School of Oriental and African Studies, PP MS 1/IBEA, Letter to Frederick
Jackson from George Mackenzie on 10 November 1888.
8 History in Africa
Table 1. List of gifts acquired by Frederick Jackson from East African chiefs.
Nairobi National Museum, Frederick Jackson Collection, 1886.1 – 1906.300.
Museum no. Description
1886.1 “Spear presented by Micreali of Kilimanjaro”

1887.2 “Spear presented by Chief Mandara of Moshi”
1887.26 “Stool presented by Chief Mandara of Moshi”
1895.1 “Royal spear presented by Mwanga”
1902. a-b “Earrings of Leitwonga, most powerful and friendly
chief in Nandi”
1902.4 “Fetish presented by Apolo Katikiro in 1902 on Sir
Frederick Jackson’s leaving Uganda”
1902.1 “Uganda stone chopping tool given by chiefs on Sir
1902.8 “Wicker bottle for berries for game of Mbau. Given by
chiefs on Sir Frederick Jackson’s leaving Uganda”
1902.9 “Acholi chair given by chiefs on Sir Frederick Jackson’s
leaving Uganda”
1902.11 “Wicker bottle for coffee beans given by chiefs on Sir
1902.12 “Ceremonial shield from Royal Tomb, ornamented
4 wooden bosses, given by chiefs on Sir Frederick
Jackson’s leaving Uganda”
1902.13 “Bark cloth mallet given by chiefs on Sir Frederick
1902.14 “Fetish ‘trial by jury’ used by medicine man, given by
1902.15 “Earthenware bottle, given by chiefs on Sir Frederick
1902.17 “Drinking cup of small calabash given by chiefs on Sir
1902.18a-d; 1902.19a-d “Women’s and children’s bracelets of ivory, given by
1902.2 “Pipe of black pottery, given by chiefs on Sir Frederick
cognisance.”17 In other places they also represented masculine power and

martial prowess.
While spears appear to have been representative of treaty-making,
Jackson received different objects when he left Uganda in 1902. We can
presume that many of the “chiefs” listed in Jackson’s inventory were
Baganda for their objects correspond with specifically Kiganda traditions.
17 Reid, Political Power, 219.
Diplomatic Gifts 9
Many of these objects signify masculine power and elite identity. The
Baganda had a reputation for creating the finest bark-cloth which has had
a long association with coronation, healing, and funeral ceremonies of the
royal family.18 The production of bark-cloth was once widespread, but when
Arab caravan traders brought increasing amounts of cotton to Buganda in
the nineteenth century, bark-cloth became more commonly associated
with specific social and cultural traditions. Only male artisans of the Ngonge
clan used bark-cloth mallets like the one that Jackson received.19 Venny M.
Nakazibwe notes that “bark-cloth was not only used to extend and bridge
social relations, but also became a major political and economic symbol of
the kingdom of Buganda,” signifying its social and political function as a
diplomatic gift. 20
Jackson also acquired a pipe made of black pottery and glazed with
graphite. The royal court and other notables were the principal owners of
black pottery.21 The royal potters, called Bajjoona, were always men, but
women controled all access to the pots during ceremonies and at royal
sites.22 The royal potters were exempt from luwaalo (tax) and received land
in exchange for their pottery. In the seventeenth-century, potters were con-
nected to public healing and political authority, and were even identified
as medicine-men and protectors of the social health of the kingdom.23
John Giblin and Kigongo Remigius note that there is a common belief
among the Ganda that their pottery is immortal (in a material and meta-
physical sense) and had a symbolic association with life.24 The bark-cloth
and the pipe were presumably given then, to emphasize the long-standing
power and prosperity of the royal court.
Prior to its advancement as a cash crop, the coffee tree and its fruits
held cultural and ritual significance. The Ganda offered coffee beans
to the spirits of deceased kings.25 They were also used in brotherhood
18 Venny Nakazibwe, “Bark-Cloth of The Baganda People of Southern Uganda:
A Record of Continuity and Change from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Early
Twenty-First Century,” PhD dissertation, Middlesex University (Middlesex, 2005), 3.
19 Nakazibwe, “Bark-Cloth of The Baganda People,” 72.
20 Nakazibwe, “Bark-Cloth of The Baganda People,” 3.
21 John Mack (ed.), Africa: Arts and Cultures (London: British Museum Press,
2000).
22 Margaret Trowell and Klaus Wachsmann, Tribal Crafts of Uganda (London:
Oxford University Press, 1953), 117.

23 Neil Kodesh, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 98–130.

24 John D. Giblin and Kigongo Remigius, “The Social and Symbolic Context of
the Royal Potters of Buganda,” Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 47–1 (2012),
64–80, 74.
25 Susan Beckerleg, Ethnic Identity and Development: Khat and Social Change in
Africa (New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 51.
10 History in Africa
ceremonies, offerings to guests, and in the game of mancala and were

therefore likely given to Jackson with friendly intentions. The coffee beans,
and indeed many of the other objects given to Jackson, resemble those that
were given by Apolo Kaggwa to the British Museum and King Edward VII
(1841–1910) in 1902. This suggests that the Ganda court forged a distinc-
tive gifting identity. Kaggwa’s collection will receive closer attention in fol-
lowing section, but it is interesting to note that he too gave the British
Museum coffee beans, a pipe, a shield, drinking vessels, fetishes, and a “chair”
amongst other items, while King Edward VII and shortly after, George V
(1865–1936), received a mancala board, smoking pipes, fetishes, drinking
vessels, a shield, and armlets.26
The ivory bracelets in Jackson’s collection belonged to women and
children. It is unclear exactly who gave these objects to Jackson or why, but
there is evidence that female members of the Kiganda and other royal
courts did engage in gift exchanges with European visitors. Muteesa’s
daughter gave the Protestant medical missionary, Dr. Robert William Felkin
(1853–1926) a stunning ceinture (similar to a belt or girdle) which con-
sisted of fashionable green, blue, and white beads and a large and rare opal
bead at the centre.27 He also acquired further gifts from princesses in
Bunyoro, such as a tobacco pouch made of cowhide by “Princess Nakatschupi”
(Kodi).28 (Canon) John Roscoe (1861–1932) received armlets, and a cof-
fee-berry basket used on the end of a princess’ sceptre at the Banyoro
Court.29 Ganda leaders also gave gifts to the wives of missionaries. In 1909,
Hamu Mukasa (1868–1956) wrote to Miss Harriet. H. Walker, the sister of
Archdeacon Walker (1857–1939), wishing her farewell from Buganda and
informing her that he had sent her some “things of our country” which
included a drum, a mat and two knives and insisted that she take them with
her to England.30 Though under-represented in colonial accounts, both
Ugandan and British women clearly had a role in the official gifting culture
of the court.
26 British Museum, Af1902,0718.1–31, Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 69353
and RCIN 69875–69924.

27 National Museums Scotland, A.1908.306.43, Robert William Felkin Collection,
“Waganda Young Princess’s Ceinture.”

28 National Museums Scotland, A.1908.306.38, Robert William Felkin Collection,
“Tobacco Pouch Made of Cowhide by Princess Nakatschupi, Kodj, Unyoro.”

29 See for example: Pitt Rivers Museum, John Roscoe Collection, 1920.101.64,
“Armlets of Black Hair Worn by Princesses, Ba Hima, Bunyoro,” and 1920.101.88,

“Very Small Case for Coffee-Berries, Made from Neck of a Gourd Covered with
Very Fine Wicker-Work; Coiled Basketry Lid. Used for Hanging on the Sceptre of
a Princess, Bunyoro.”
30 Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Cambridge University Library, RCMS
339, Correspondence and Papers of Robert Walker, Ham Mukasa to Miss Walker,
31 March 1909.
Diplomatic Gifts 11
In his published work, Jackson ranked the gifts that he received. The
gifts of Mbaguta, the Katikkiro of Ankole, featured particularly highly in his
assessment. Like Kaggwa, Mbaguta carved a strong diplomatic reputation
for himself in the 1901 Ankole Agreement which Jackson administered in
his role as Acting Commissioner. Jackson described with pleasure how
Mbaguta had loaded up his caravan with “curios of the finest workman-
ship” during a visit. Jackson compared his encounter with Mbaguta to his
recent stays with both Wakoli, “Chief” of Busoga who had simply been gen-
erous with food and hospitality, and the Maasai who had not impressed
with their gifts of beads.31 Mbaguta’s generosity had appealed most greatly
to Jackson “as it extended to gifts of the arts and crafts,” highlighting the
value which Jackson attributed to a physical gift, particularly, anything that
fell under the category of “curio”, “art” or “craft.” Mbaguta’s gift also
communicated a sense of “gratitude” to Jackson. In his memoir, Jackson
described his preconception of Ugandans as “lacking in affection or regard
for the white man.” This image, he argued, had been constructed by lin-
guists who claimed that “in most native languages there is no real word for
gratitude.”32 Jackson did not explain what Mbaguta was supposed to have
been grateful for – presumably the dominant role which he had been
accorded in the Ankole Agreement – but in this scenario, Jackson under-
stood these gifts to have performed an important act of diplomacy which
language alone could not.
Prior to the arrival of officials like Jackson, missionaries were impor-
tant diplomatic envoys. Gifting also played an important role in their early
encounters with Ugandan royalty. Felkin was a medical missionary and one
of the first CMS (Church Missionary Society) representatives to enter
Uganda in 1878. He also appears to have been the first major missionary
collector of Ugandan objects. He gave his collection to the Royal Scottish
Museum in Edinburgh (now National Museums of Scotland) in 1908.
Felkin’s most famous patient was Kabaka Muteesa. Felkin used his medicinal
knowledge – which can be considered a gift in itself – to build a diplomatic
relationship with Muteesa. John Rowe argues that Muteesa’s precarious sit-
uation and Felkin’s skill offered a powerful opportunity for the CMS to
demonstrate its spiritual effectiveness.33 Muteesa declared Felkin a great
“medicine man” and gave him a fine Waganda drinking tube of plaited
grass – an object used only by elite figures – thus establishing his position
in the Royal Court.
31 Frederick Jackson, Early Days in East Africa (London: E. Arnold & Company,
1930), 387.
32 Jackson, Early Days in East Africa, 306.
33 John Rowe, “Mutesa and the Missionaries: Church and State in Pre-Colonial
Buganda,” in: Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (eds.), Christian Missionaries
and the State in the Third World (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2002), 52–65, 55.
What were the consequences if one made an error in their gifting?

On 17 February 1879, French Roman Catholic missionaries, led by Père
Lourdel (1853–1890) arrived at Muteesa’s Court representing the Roman
Catholic Société des Missionaires d’Afrique. Like Felkin, Lourdel also attempted
to provide medical treatment to the King. But despite Felkin’s earlier suc-
cesses, neither his European medicines nor Lourdel’s faith healing contin-
ued to succeed.34 Both men decided to turn to alternative measures to win
the favor of the Kabaka, and showered Muteesa and his court with gifts.
The first CMS missionaries had given Muteesa a Bible amongst other small
gifts, but when a new group of White Fathers arrived in the country in
1880, Lourdel organized a special gift for the Kabaka, much to the dismay
of Alexander Mackay (1849–1890):
In June (…) the other four priests arrived, bringing with them a present
for the King, which, though little in harmony with the spirit of Christianity,
was just the kind of gift with which Rome might be expected to try and
win the favour of a heathen King – five guns, four swords, three cavalry
helmets, some richly embroidered generals’ uniforms lined with satin,
some beautiful Arab dresses, braided with gold and silver and a cask of
gunpowder.35
In addition to this hoard of European weaponry and clothing, Lourdel

also built Muteesa a European-style bedstead.36 It is unclear how Muteesa
reacted to Lourdel’s gifts, but pushed to match and better the French
missionaries, Mackay adapted the British approach by offering to build
a carriage.37
In addition to these lavish crafted goods, Queen Victoria also sent gifts
of international code flags to Muteesa in 1881.38 However, Henry Morton
Stanley (1841–1904) had previously promised gifts of armor and ammuni-
tion on behalf of the Queen. As Mackay explained: “[W]hen the envoys
finally arrived, it was a grievous disappointment to him to find that they
brought back with them merely the customary presents of courtesy, which
he had previously received from such persons as the Sultan of Zanzibar,
and no practical proposals of alliance.”39 These events remind us of the
fierce competition among European groups in Uganda and the variety of
ways in which that competition played out on the frontiers of the Empire.
They also remind us how Europeans were reliant upon the favor of the
34 Rowe, “Mutesa and the Missionaries,” 62–63.

35 CMS Gleaner, 1880, 33.
36 Rowe, “Mutesa and the Missionaries,” 58.
37 Rowe, “Mutesa and the Missionaries,” 59.
38 J.M. Gray, “Mutesa of Buganda,” Uganda Journal 1 (1934), 46.
39 Alexina Harrison, A.M. Mackay, Pioneer Missionary of the Church Missionary
Society to Uganda (New York NY: A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1890), 210.
Diplomatic Gifts 13
Kabaka in the early days of settlement in Uganda; for national success and
for their personal and collective safety. But in their own acts of defiance,
missionaries could withhold gifts as a method of punishment. During
Mwanga’s reign, Jackson noted that “[i]n my office were two very large and
gaudily decorated chairs that had originally been sent out by the Directors
of the Imperial British East Africa Company as a present [to Muteesa], but
on arrival they were not presented owing to some misdeed or malpractice
on his part.”40 A duplicate of these chairs, or “thrones,” now sits inconspic-
uously in a corner of the Director’s Meeting Room at the Royal Geographical
Society in London.41
In 1905, Charles Delmé-Radcliffe (1864–1937) gave a lecture to the
Royal Geographical Society which detailed his own experience of gift
exchange in East Africa.42 Delmé-Radcliffe was a senior military officer and
civil administrator of the Nile Province who had been ordered to produce
systematic surveys of Madi, Acholi, and Lango territories in the late 1890s.
During his account, he described an encounter in Patiko in the Nile Province
where Samuel and Lady Baker had formerly built a fort. During this
encounter, he engaged with an elderly chief called Watel Ajus. According
to Delmé-Radcliffe, Ajus:
(…) took an elephant’s hair necklace from his neck and begged me to
give it to [Lady Baker] when I went back. This I did and the old chief was
delighted to receive a return present of photographs of Sir Samuel and
Lady Baker, with an ivory-handled knife. This he acknowledged by sending
back a leopard-skin to Lady Baker.43
Ivory and leopard-skins were traditionally given to Acholi “chiefs” (rwots) as

a form of precolonial tribute. Other popular tributes included iron brace-
lets, arrows, spear heads, and hoe blades. Ronald Atkinson explains that
local people made tributes to the rwodi and that these gifts were central to
the workings of chiefship and social stratification. In return, the rwodi recip-
rocated by redistributing other gifts.44 The rwodi were thus “the focal point
in the redistribution of goods and services within the polity.” The rwot
could “use his position as the most generous giver to build up a fund of
40 Jackson, Early Days in East Africa, 276–277.

41 RoyalGeographical Society, RGS700081, Duplicate of the Throne Presented
in 1891 to Mwanga, Last Independent King, or Kabaka, of Buganda, by the Imperial
British East Africa Company.
42 Harry Johnston, “Major Delmé Radcliffe’s Map of the Nile Province of the
Uganda Protectorate,” The Geographical Journal 21–2 (1903), 162–164.

43 Charles Delmé-Radcliffe, “Studies and Surveys in Uganda,” The Geographical
Journal 26–5 (1905), 481–487, 482.

44 Ronald R. Atkinson, Roots of Ethnicity (Philadelphia PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 93.
social and political good will and support,” and this “translated into real
power over people.”45 Ajus therefore engaged Delmé-Radcliffe in a tradi-
tional form of gift exchange, but with the added inclusion of photographs.
The ivory-handled knife also signified an elite identity on the part of the
British.
Sixty different independent rwodi “chiefdoms” existed by the time that
the British arrived.46 The British, however, sought to insert a Buganda-style
council of chiefs who would cooperate with British ambitions. “Paramount
Chiefs” were created and independent chiefdoms began to be amalgamated
into the British system. Delmé-Radcliffe used Ajus’s gift to demonstrate the
latter’s loyalty, cooperation and allegiance to Baker and the British. To
develop the point about loyalty, he presented in his lecture another similar
story about a man called: “Old Shooli [who] was still very flourishing, and
was most useful to the administration. (…) Shooli gave me one of the
scarlet shirts which had been worn by Sir Samuel’s famous ‘Forty Thieves.’
He had treasured it carefully all those years in an earthenware jar, as a
sort of credential to show his connection with Baker.”47 In doing so, “Old
Shooli,” just like the European museum, put Baker into storage. In doing
so, he sought to display and also preserve their connection. Bernard Cohn
has observed that the gift of clothing, incorporated recipients “into the
body of the donor.”48
However, the closeness implied in Delmé-Radcliffe’s description of
these gift exchanges stands in stark contrast to the descriptions that others
provide of his time in northern Uganda. Unlike “Old Shooli,” many Acholi
chiefdoms sought to resist British intrusion. Unhelpful and disobedient
chiefs saw their traditional rights and symbols of power removed. One of
the most poignant examples of this centred around the drum. The only
people permitted to play their drums, were government rwodi. The British
also confiscated the drums of the Pagak, Parabongo, Paomo, and Pawal.49
Delmé-Radcliffe was ordered to disarm the increasingly militarized Acholi
and to bring their rwodi in to line with the structures of British governmen-
tal organization. In the process, he acquired four Acholi drums, six from
45 Atkinson,Roots of Ethnicity, 94.

46 Charles Amone and Okullu Muura, “British Colonialism and the Creation of
Acholi Ethnic Identity in Uganda, 1894 to 1962,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History 42–2 (2014), 239–257, 240.
47 The word “Shooli” was adapted by Baker from the Kutoria term “Shuuli.”
Baker used “Shooli” to describe the area now known as Acholi. He identified the
paramount ruler of Shooli as Rwotcamo. This may or may not have been the indi-
vidual referred to above as “Old Shooli.” Atkinson, Roots of Ethnicity, 271.
48 Bernard S. Cohn, “Representing Authority in Victorian India,” in: Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1983), 165–210, 168.
49 Atkinson, Roots of Ethnicity, 96.
Diplomatic Gifts 15
the Lango, and two “miscellaneous” drums.50 In his speech to the Royal
Geographic Society, Delmé-Radcliffe claimed that it had not been necessary
to fire a single shot anywhere on the British side of the boundary.51
However, Ogenga Otunnu has described how Delmé-Radcliffe was popu-
larly known in Acholi as Langa-Langa, a “bulldozer” because of his unre-
strained political violence. Acholi war songs also record the “terror” of the
Langa-Langa.52 He also argues that during a punitive expedition in 1894
to stop Langi support of Kabalega, Delmé-Radcliffe’s troops “unleashed
terror and plundered the area.”53 In response, groups including the Payira
declared war on the colonial system. It was in the context of these events
that Delmé-Radcliffe acquired a further 390 objects from the region.54
These objects did not represent a particularly violent or “primitive”
people. Acholi was one of the most heavily armed districts in the Protectorate
and official British narratives regularly described the violence of the Acholi.
Instead, they present a group with strong cultural roots and a system of
powerful leadership.55 Other than a war horn, a sword bound in snake
skin, an arrow and two shields – all objects of a former style of warfare – the
collection instead represented chiefly power and culture. Objects included
an ivory armlet, a headrest, bracelets and necklaces made of iron wire,
a stool, belts and aprons of chiefly wives, skilfully made headwear, and
musical instruments. These objects also represented a rich culture of com-
merce and trade. Glass beads of various colours adorned girdles, necklaces
and headwear were the result of a successful but relatively short-lived slave
and ivory trade and proximity to Sudan.56 Headwear such as the piece below,
were symbols of power, masculinity and identity. Like the royal drums, the
Acholi only used headwear on special occasions such as clan meetings,
male initiation and peace talks.57 Research by Vanessa Bahirana Kazzora
50 British Museum, Charles Delmé-Radcliffe Collection, Af1902,0714.197–200;
Af1902,0714.202–208; Af1902,0714.201, and Af1902,0714.205.

51 Charles Delmé-Radcliffe, Geographical Journal (Continued) 26–6 (1905),
616–632, 623.
52 Ogenga Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda, 1890 to
1979 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 120.

53 Otunnu, Crisis of Legitimacy, 115, 120.
54 British Museum, Charles Delmé-Radcliffe Collection, Af1902.0714.
55 Richard Reid explains that “[t]he roots of the northern military complex
lie in this striking conjunction of the nineteenth-century military revolution and a

localised, pragmatic application of British martial race theory.” Richard Reid,
A History of Modern Uganda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 182–183.
56 Reid, A History of Modern Uganda, 194.
57 Vanessa Bahirana Kazzora, “Ceremonial Headdress,” in: Kiprop Lagat
and Julie Hudson (eds.), Hazina: Traditions, Trade and Transitions in Eastern Africa
(Nairobi: National Museums of Kenya, 2006), 82–83, 83. See also: Michael Oehrl,
“Beaded Coiffures of the Acholi, Dodinga, Latuka, and Related Groups,” Tribal Art
80 (2016), 112–121.
also suggests that they were “symbols of resistance and identity during the
colonial and post-colonial period.”
There appear to be no records of provenance for Delmé-Radcliffe’s
collection, so we cannot be sure whether these objects were gifted, just as
Watel Ajus and Old Shooli had done, or plundered. Delmé-Radcliffe’s
experience reminds us that while gift exchange could be a highly inter-
personal act, the acquisition of objects also occurred under extremely
violent circumstances.
Gifts in Motion: Apolo Kaggwa in Britain
The most active indigenous collector and donor of Ugandan material cul-
ture in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century was Apolo Kaggwa.
Kaggwa is best remembered for his written texts. In 1901, he produced the
first published record of a unilineal Kiganda history in the Luganda ver-
nacular entitled Bassekabaka Be Buganda (The Kings of Buganda), followed in
short succession by a number of other significant texts relating to Ganda
customs, clans and folklore.58 A central feature of these works was the
historical development of the Kiganda dynasty. In his 1974 translation of
Bassekabaka Be Buganda, Mathias Kiwanuka argued that these books served
a political purpose: to unify disparate clans under a sense of “nationhood”
and around the concept of a centralized monarchy through knowledge of
a common founding myth, history, leader, and culture.59 The 1901 book
chronicled a history of traditions whilst serving modernising purposes, and
in the process secured his own name within the annals and traditions of
Uganda’s history. The Tales of Sir Apolo: Uganda Folklore and Proverbs (translated
in 1934), likewise was a powerful, and largely biographical book which pre-
sented Kaggwa as a commoner who had ascended the Buganda Kingdom
and penetrated the Court as a mediator of local cultural practices and an
able handler of culture.60
After Kaggwa’s efforts a rich vein of written material subsequently
emerged from among Uganda’s political thinkers. The value placed upon
58 Apolo Kaggwa, Bassekabaka be Buganda (The Kings of Buganda) [translated by
Semakula Kiwanuka] (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971 [1901]); Apolo
Kaggwa, Ekitabo Kye Kika kya Nsenene (The Book of the Grasshopper Clan) (Mengo:
A.K. Press, 1905); Apolo Kaggwa, Ekitabo Kye Mpisa Za Baganda (The Book of the
Customs of Buganda) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934 [1905]); Apolo
Kaggwa, Ekitabo Kye Bika Bya Baganda (The Book of the Clans of Buganda) (Kampala:
Uganda Bookshop and Uganda Society, 1949 [1908]); Apolo Kaggwa, The Tales of
Sir Apolo: Uganda Folklore and Proverbs (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1934).
59 Semakula Kiwanuka, “Introduction,” in: Apolo Kaggwa, Bassekabaka be Buganda
(The Kings of Buganda) [translated by Semakula Kiwanuka] (Nairobi: East African Publish-
ing House, 1971 [1901]), i–xxii, xxi.
60 Kaggwa, The Tales of Sir Apolo.
Diplomatic Gifts 17
Figure 1. British Museum, Af1902,0714.31, Coiffure. Acholi, Uganda. Late

nineteenth century. Human hair, leather, glass beads, thread. Collected by
Col. Charles Delmé-Radcliffe in 1902. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
written documents was linked to the importance of “the word” more gen-
erally in colonial Uganda. John Rowe argued that the ability to read pro-
vided the spiritual key to the Christian religion and in addition it provided
political and social advancement.61 Kaggwa’s intellectual writings have been
the focus of lively and important discussion among academics. To fully
appreciate Kaggwa’s efforts at knowledge and identity creation in the late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, however, it must be recognized
that he engaged in multiple methods to achieve them. These methods
included the deployment of both texts and material culture.
While writing his historical texts, Kaggwa also set about collecting
and organising a significant collection of object material associated with
that past. He gave many of these objects to museums in both Uganda and
Britain, demonstrating the rich triangulation in which he utilised historical
narrative, object collecting, and cultural gifting for political ends. The
triangulation of Kaggwa’s methods in turn demands an interdisciplinary and
multi-layered analytical approach which considers textual and object sources
within the same framework of analysis. Kaggwa’s historical texts have had
an enduring legacy and are still key points of departure and debate for cur-
rent researchers as a window on both the colonial and precolonial past.
61 John A. Rowe, “Myth, Memoir and Moral Admonition: Luganda Historical
Writing, 1893–1969,” Uganda Journal 33 (1969), 17–40.
His gifted ethnographic collections, however, have remained unanalyzed

in their museum settings for around a century. In bringing Kaggwa’s gifts
and historical writings back into the same framework of analysis I hope to
present new insights into the complex relationship between ethnography,
history, and the maintenance of institutional power in colonial Uganda.
Kiwanuka suggested that in addition to Kaggwa’s written work, material
objects such as regalia, royal and clan drums, weapons, and fetishes might
also provide some of the best sources of information for the royal history of
Uganda.62 Royal and clan drums, he observed, were sometimes made in
memory of important events, while Roland Oliver described the preserved
jawbones of former Kabakas as “charters of the present dynasty” in his inves-
tigations into the royal tombs of Buganda in 1959.63 But many important
objects were destroyed in fires and the great destruction of religious civil
war in the 1880s and 1890s. Others were destroyed in 1966, when central
government troops stormed the Lubiri Palace of Kabaka Muteesa II (1924–
1969) and set it on fire. Kiwanuka pondered whether many of the objects
that did survive these events, had been “misappropriated by the colo-
nial administration” and were “lying in European and perhaps American
museums.” His suspicions were correct, though it was not only the colonial
administration who had appropriated these objects, but also Kaggwa – the
subject of his own study.
In July 1902, Kaggwa traveled to Britain with his Secretary, Hamu
Mukasa, on an official visit for the coronation of King Edward VII. During
his momentous visit, Kaggwa gifted a collection of thirty-one objects to
the British Museum, sixteen to Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology (formerly known as the Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology, hereafter MAA), and other objects to King Edward VII and the
Royal Collection.64 These objects have yet to receive any serious interroga-
tion other than by Rachel Hand at the MAA, who has written about a brass
necklet once worn by the King’s bodyguard.65
Mukasa chronicled the trip in the 1904 book entitled Uganda’s Katikiro
in England.66 The book provides a wealth of contextual information behind
Kaggwa’s gift, such as visits to museums and cultural institutions, the pre-
sentation of gifts during house visits and long descriptions of their general
62 Kiwanuka, “Introduction,” iii.

63 See: A.J. Lush, “Kiganda Drums,” Uganda Journal 3 (1935), 7–20; F. Lukyn
Williams, “The Drum Wango,” Uganda Journal 6 (1938), 54–55; Roland Oliver,
“The Royal Tombs of Buganda,” Uganda Journal 23 (1959), 124–133.
64 British Museum, Af1902,0718.1–31, Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 69656
and RCIN 69875–69924, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of

Cambridge, E 1903.466–480A.
65 Hand, “Brass Necklet,” 74–77.
66 Ham Mukasa, Uganda’s Katikiro in England: Being the Official Account of His Visit
to the Coronation of His Majesty King Edward VII (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1904).
Diplomatic Gifts 19
impressions of their material surroundings. D.A. Low argues that Mukasa’s

account illustrates the intended awe and spectacle that the British sought
to enforce upon them.67
In his descriptions of their museum visits, Mukasa explained how he
and Kaggwa learnt the workings and purposes of European museums and
their collections. In these spaces, Mukasa keenly noted the arrangement of
material by country, as well as the memorialization of kings and leaders.
In the Crystal Palace, Mukasa observed that:
[T]hey keep only the most beautiful things. There are figures of all the
kings, and many great men. (…) There are also copies of all the things
made in their land; they pick out one thing and put it there to show
people how things are made in different places to which they cannot go
themselves… They chisel out stones and make them just like people, and
put them there to remind people after years what they were like.68
In collecting and gifting ethnographic material, Kaggwa joined a network

of other influential figures in Uganda’s European colonial society for
whom collecting and gifting were key elements of one’s cultural repertoire
as well as tools of “soft” power, to be used in conjunction with more formal
state instruments. During these visits, Kaggwa must have felt aware of his
own historical position and of his material contributions to that legacy.
Although Kaggwa only resided in England for a limited length of time,
he ensured that his objects would remain and that their longevity would
remind viewers of his reputation.
Kaggwa selected the British Museum and the University of Cambridge
as recipients for his gifts knowing that such institutions would provide him
with an increased public profile within imperial society. When understood
in their context as “gifts” these objects illustrate a keen understanding on
Kaggwa’s part about the gift economy of European museums and the polit-
ical and social role of such gifts. A reputable school in Cambridge accepted
Kaggwa’s son into its ranks in the years following his gift suggesting an ele-
ment of reciprocity and access to elite British networks. Through Kaggwa’s
gift we can also add further nuance to Low’s notion of British hegemony.
Kaggwa was himself an active participant in this process and used material
culture and gifting as a potent symbol of his own regal and historical authority.
Kaggwa’s gift reveals new perspectives on the power of British cultural
institutions, but also provides a rare opportunity to view the agency of a
non-European donor who simultaneously appropriated the Museum for
his own political and social ends.
67 D.
Anthony Low, Fabrication of Empire: The British and the Uganda Kingdoms,
1890–1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 330–332.
68 Mukasa, Uganda’s Katikiro, 94.
Unfortunately, as with Kaggwa’s earlier publications, Uganda’s Katikiro

in England does not make any direct mention of Kaggwa’s actual collection
practices, highlighting that there are whole areas of his historical interests
such as collecting, which found no place in his writings.69 However, other
sources reveal the visual imagery behind the construction of the gift.
Rev. Ernest Millar’s papers at the Royal Commonwealth Society Library in
Cambridge contain the photograph that is pictured in Figure 2. The careful
curation of the photograph informs us that Kaggwa’s gift was pre-planned
and carefully considered. Published works by other collectors at this time also
highlight that the transportation of goods from Uganda was not straight-
forward, implying that a real sense of the value and purpose was accorded
to the transportation of these particular objects.70
The only textual information related to this photograph comes from
its caption “Charms Brought to England by the Katikiro and the Rev. E.
Millar. A Group of Labare (Spirit) Instruments Comprising Magic Wands,
a Headdress, a Shield, Drums, Horns and Cards.” In their newly assembled
state, the reclassification of this whole group of objects as “charms” paid
little attention to the distinct meanings of each individual object and
focused instead upon basic European anthropological and missionary
schemas of pre-colonial magic. The deliberate curation of the objects bol-
sters this sense of reclassification. A careful symmetry, which almost resem-
bles a church altar, suggests that they had already been pre-curated along
Christian lines, corroborating the Christian influence in Kaggwa’s writings.
The inclusion of Millar’s name further confirms this. Object labels at the
MAA reveal that many of these objects had belonged to members of the
royal family. The looped, chevron container at very back of this image is
an umbilical cord holder of a former King. The remaining items were
described by the Museum as “fetishes” which had belonged to lubaale gods
including Mukasa and Kibuuka. Kaggwa gave further lubaale objects including
fetishes to the British Museum including an iron spoon used by “demon
priests” for burning tongues, divination artefacts, charms, and amulets.
The inventories of Kaggwa’s gifts, listed in tables 2–3, illustrate that fetishes
and objects of the old religion formed a significant proportion of his gifts.
Other objects included drinking vessels, adornment for children, a hoe, axe,
shield, tobacco pipe, and bark cloth amongst other things.
Clearly Kaggwa’s gifts must be read with an analytical understanding
that courtly and missionary research and narratives were closely entwined.
His close working relationship with the Rev. John Roscoe is well known,
and Roscoe facilitated Kaggwa’s gift to the MAA via his own personal links
69 This author has not yet viewed the Apolo Kaggwa papers at Makerere
University which may contain further insights into Kaggwa’s gifting mentality.
70 See for example: R.W. Felkin, “Review of Major P.H.G. Powell Cotton’s
‘In Unknown Africa: A Narrative of Twenty Months’ Travel and Sport in Unknown
Lands and among New Tribes,” Man 5 (1905), 25–28.
Diplomatic Gifts 21
Figure 2. Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library,

Ernest Millar collection, RCMS 113/38/3/23, “Charms Brought to England by
the Katikiro and the Rev. E. Millar. A Group of Labare (Spirit) Instruments
Comprising Magic Wands, a Headdress, a Shield, Drums, Horns and Cards.”
Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
with the museum. However, Muslim leaders also sought appeasement in this
period and Kaggwa gave a beer vessel in the context of wider civic debates in
Uganda about the consumption of beer.71 This latter line of enquiry regarding
Kaggwa’s efforts at heritage management and contemporary debates about
Islamic political and religious culture require further research. However,
while Kaggwa’s motivations for the collecting and gifting of Buganda’s histor-
ical and religious past to cultural institutions are not explicit, it is clear that
they were entangled in a wider material and managerial strategy which spoke
to both the local and colonial politics of his time.
Objects aided the formation of a collective tangible memory, but also
mobilized state sponsored narratives and public discourses about the
future. Here, the past was a field of tradition which was imagined and made
71
Noel Quinton King, A.B.K. Kasozi and Arye Oded, Islam and the Confluence of
Religions in Uganda, 1840–1966 (Tallahassee FL: American Academy of Religion,
1973), 45–54.
Table 2. Gifts presented to the British Museum by Apolo Kaggwa in July 1902.
Museum No. Description
Af1902,0718.27 “Cup”
Af1902,0718.26 “Cup”
Af1902,0718.25 “Cup”
Af1902,0718.24 “Funnel”
Af1902,0718.32 “Cowrie shell”
Af1902,0718.31 “Child’s Waist Ring”
Af1902,0718.30 “Broom”
Af1902,0718.29 “Sample”
Af1902,0718.23 “Vessel/bottle”
Af1902,0718.22 “Cupping horn”
Af1902,0718.21 “Hoe”
Af1902,0718.20 “Axe”
Af1902,0718.19 “Charm”
Af1902,0718.18 “Shield; charm”
Af1902,0718.3.a “Tobacco pipe”
Af1902,0718.2 “Container”
Af1902,0718.6.b–c “Toothbrush; fly whisk”
Af1902,0718.6.a “Priest’s Charm”
Af1902,0718.7 “Hunting Whistle”
Af1902,0718.5 “Smoking Indian hemp cup made of pottery,
pigment”
Af1902,0718.4 “Smoking Indian hemp cup made of pottery,
pigment”
Af1902,0718.1 “Bark-cloth”
Af1902,0718.16 “Priest’s staff, charm made of wood, hide, string
(vegetable fibre), shells (cowrie), beads (glass)”
Af1902,0718.15 “Spoon-shaped ritual object, ritual object made of
iron, wood”
Af1902,0718.14 “Amulet consisting of a section portion of buffalo
horn”
Af1902,0718.10 “Divining artefact (with bell) made of leather, hide, wire
(copper), iron”
Af1902,0718.8 “Chair, also used as shield, made of wood, cord (hide)”
Af1902,0718.9.a “Ankole war bow of pale, hard, not very lustre wood.
The tips are sharpened and beat well forward.
The bow is quite plain and has no ‘grip’”
Af1902,0718.13 “Head band, charm (against spirits and headache) made
of string (fibre), leather, shells, wood, wire (copper)”
Af1902,0718.17 “Staff (?), charm (?) made from the twisted branch of
a tree. Forked at top; upper section has cover made
from bark fibre”
Diplomatic Gifts 23
Table 3. Gifts presented to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

by Apolo Kaggwa in 1903.
Museum No. Description
E 1903.467; Z 32771 “A string of large black seeds (and one white cowry shell)
used as money before the introduction of the cowry
shell. It was one of the armlets of the Royal family”
E 1903.466 “Necklet worn by royal bodyguard when in king’s
presence”
E 1903.468 “Sanctuary of the Lubare (deity) during campaigns, when
visiting a sick person etc”
E 1903.469 “The sanctuary of the Lubare (deity) when required to
leave his temple”
E 1903.470 “Small light brown leather covered crescent shaped
fetish”
E 1903.471 “Brown leather covered fetish”
E 1903.472 “Conical brown leather covered stopper-shaped fetish on
thong of woven rawhide and fur”
E 1903.473 “Fetishes on fibre cord. A loose label on the specimen
says, ‘The Lubare Mukasa’s cow charm used to secure
protection of Mukasa against lightening striking
cattle’”
E 1903.474 “Fetish: globular object encased in hide with a leopard’s
claw projecting at one end”
E 1903.475 “Conical shaped brown leather covered fetish with furry
rawhide cord”
E 1903.476 “Flat oval fetish covered in brown bark cloth with
rawhide cord and strips of skin attached”
E 1903.477 “Large oval fetish covered with skin of light brown
colour with double plaited fibre cord attached”
E 1903.478 “Fetish: A stick-like object enclosed in plantain leaves and
bound round with fibre: globular head”
E 1903.479 “Fetish of elongated shape, swelling bulbously in centre
and covered with skin, the fur being outside”
E 1903.480 “Fetish: two similar globular objects encased in hide with
a leopard’s tooth (or warthog/pigs tusk) projecting from
one end of each”
E 1903.480 A “A fetish consisting of a bundle of sticks, the majority
bound with fibre and several with a fibre covered
bulbous head”
1920.256/Roscoe “Official staff of office of the Katikiro, made of
smoothed wood decorated with four bands of
copper wire and one of brass wire: a small knob at
the bottom”
tangible through objects in order to create a future identity. In both

Kaggwa’s writings and objects, we find a constant tension, or rather dia-
logue, between the past and the present. Objects were vehicles for nav-
igating cultural memory, local and colonial power, civic debates, ideals
and identity politics. Gifting added to the performance of these props and
bolstered Kaggwa’s position in important networks of power.
Conclusion
The exchange of gifts played a key role in the functioning of modern

imperialism on the ground, and offers a unique window on the strategic
and affective aspects of early diplomatic encounters between the British
and Ugandan elite. Gifts served as political envoys, and were part of the
navigation of new political and social spaces. They paved the way for new
relations and the exercise of agency. But gifting was a complex act which
often involved intense negotiation, and the possibility of fast alterations
in the balance of power for either party in the exchange. It served to
create a relationship or association between individuals and groups, but
also signified different things for those on either side of the exchange.
These complexities remind us of the unevenness and shifting boundaries
of colonial power relations, and challenge the concept of any overarching
and dominant cultural hegemony exerted by colonial powers.
While European museums often flattened these aspects of their prov-
enance once the gifts entered the institution, others objects continued to
occupy key positions in historical and contemporary methods of cultural
memory production. The gifts discussed in this article have had interesting
and varied after-lives. Some objects remained in museum stores, while
others went on display, and a small number were repatriated. Jackson’s
gifts to the Nairobi National Museum were in a state of disuse until the
1960s. It was only in 1962 that Jean Brown, a curator, created acquisition
cards for them. Having done so, she noted that “some of the collection is
of considerable historical interest e.g. the Buganda Royal Spear presented
by Mwanga in 1895.” However, she continued that “there has obviously
been little systematic collection, gifts being from people concentrating
on collecting spectacular objects like spears, shields and head-dresses,
rather than on objects of everyday use which are of the greatest impor-
tance to any ethnographical collection. There is very little clothing in the
collection, and very little to illustrate the various stages of a given techno-
logical process.”72 The objects which were once so desired because of
their links to important elite figures, had lost their appeal by the 1960s
after decolonization.
72 Nairobi National Museum, MUS/F/E/2/1–3 Ethnology 1962, Jean Brown
to R.H. Carcasson, 10 December 1962.
Diplomatic Gifts 25
In Britain, museum records reveal that Kaggwa’s objects made a

significant contribution to British anthropological knowledge about
Uganda at the time of their donation, perhaps more so than his texts
which had not yet been translated from the Luganda vernacular. The
“sacrificial beer pot” supposedly used at royal sacrificial sites, featured
in a striking full-page spread in the Museum’s Handbook to the Ethnographic
Collections until 1910 as a focal point for Ugandan material culture.73
After this time, we hear almost nothing about it. The pot is now tucked
away inconspicuously on a display shelf as an example of Kiganda pot-
tery work.
Perhaps one of the most notable groups of objects to be associated with
Kaggwa and the nation’s complex cultural memory, are the Kibuuka relics.
Archival records at the MAA reveal that on 2 November 1961, Abubakar
Mayanja, a former Cambridge student and then Ugandan Minister for
Education for the King’s government, asked the Vice-chancellor of the
University of Cambridge for the return of the relics.74 They were presented
to the Uganda Museum on permanent loan on the occasion of Ugandan
independence and remain one of the most notable accessions in the Museum’s
history.75 Mayanja told the Museum Director:
You will appreciate that at the time, i.e. at the turn of the century when
Christianity had just captured the imagination of our people making
them very devout believers who were anxious to forget their pagan past,
such things would have been regarded as of little value… though it is
doubtful whether Sir Apolo had the right to give them away.76
However, the relics have never been directly linked to Kaggwa. Museum
records instead accorded them to Roscoe, raising important questions
about the nature of colonial gifts and the ownership of material culture
and heritage in the postcolonial world. The Kibuuka relics have provoked
discussion and debate throughout the long course of their lives, illustrating
the important sense of both physical presence and absence that was cre-
ated through the act of colonial gifting. These, and the many other objects
that were circulated and exchanged through the gift economy in colonial
Uganda, also underline the challenges faced by contemporary institutions
in curating imperial legacies.
73 British
Museum Central Archive, Handbook to the Ethnographical Collections
(1910).
74 John Roscoe, “Kibuka, the War God of the Baganda,” Man 7 (1907), 161–166;
Merrick Posnansky, The Uganda Museum Annual Report (Kampala, 1961), 8.

75 Posnansky, The Uganda Museum, 8.
76 University of Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
A.K. Mayanja to Vice-Chancellor, 2 November 1961, AA4/5/15.
References
Amone, Charles, and Okullu Muura, “British Colonialism and the Creation of Acholi
Ethnic Identity in Uganda, 1894 to 1962,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History 42–2 (2014), 239–257.
Appadurai, Arjun, and Igor Kopytoff, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics
of Value;” in: Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in
Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3–63.
Atkinson, Ronald R., Roots of Ethnicity (Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2015).
Bahirana Kazzora, Vanessa, “Ceremonial Headdress,” in: Kiprop Lagat and
Julie Hudson (eds.), Hazina: Traditions, Trade and Transitions in Eastern Africa
(Nairobi: National Museums of Kenya, 2006), 82–83.
Beckerleg, Susan, Ethnic Identity and Development: Khat and Social Change in Africa
(New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Cohn, Bernard S., “Representing Authority in Victorian India,” in: Eric Hobsbawm
and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 165–210.
Delmé-Radcliffe, Charles, “Surveys and Studies in Uganda,” The Geographical Journal
26–5 (1905), 481–487.
———, Geographical Journal (Continued) 26–6 (1905), 616–632.
Earle, Jonathon, Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical
Imagination in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Eaton, Natasha, “Between Mimesis and Alterity: Art, Gift, and Diplomacy in Colonial
India, 1770–1800,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46–4 (2004), 816–844.
Felkin, R.W., “Review of Major P.H.G. Powell Cotton’s ‘In Unknown Africa: A Narrative
of Twenty Months’ Travel and Sport in Unknown Lands and among New Tribes,”
Man 5 (1905), 25–28.
Giblin, John D., and Kigongo Remigius, “The Social and Symbolic Context of
the Royal Potters of Buganda,” Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 47–1
(2012), 64–80.
Gosden, Chris, and Chantal Knowles, Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and
Colonial Change (Oxford: Berg, 2001).
Gray, J.M., “Mutesa of Buganda,” Uganda Journal 1 (1934), 46.
Harris, Clare, and Michael O’Hanlon, “The Future of the Ethnographic Museum,”
Anthropology Today 29–1 (2013), 8–12.
Harrison, Alexina, A.M. Mackay, Pioneer Missionary of the Church Missionary Society
to Uganda (New York NY: A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1890).
Jackson, Frederick, Early Days in East Africa (London: E. Arnold & Company, 1930).
Johnston, Harry, “Major Delmé Radcliffe’s Map of the Nile Province of the Uganda
Protectorate,” The Geographical Journal 21–2 (1903), 162–164.
Kaggwa, Apolo, Ekitabo Kye Kika kya Nsenene (The Book of the Grasshopper Clan)
(Mengo: A.K. Press, 1905).
———, Ekitabo Kye Mpisa Za Baganda (The Book of the Customs of Buganda) (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1934 [1905]).
———, The Tales of Sir Apolo: Uganda Folklore and Proverbs (London: The Religious
Tract Society, 1934).
———, Ekitabo Kye Bika Bya Baganda (The Book of the Clans of Buganda) (Kampala:
Uganda Bookshop and Uganda Society, 1949 [1908]).
Diplomatic Gifts 27
———, Bassekabaka Be Buganda (The Kings of Buganda) [translated by Semakula Kiwanuka]

(Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971 [1901]).
Kennedy, Dane, “Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory,” Journal of Imperial
and Commonwealth History 24–3 (1996), 345–363.
King, Noel Quinton, A.B.K. Kasozi and Arye Oded, Islam and the Confluence of Religions
in Uganda, 1840–1966 (Tallahassee FL: American Academy of Religion, 1973).
Kingdon, Zachary, and Dimitri van den Bersselaar, “Collecting Empire? African
Objects, West African Trade, and a Liverpool Museum,” in: Sheryllynne Haggerty,
Anthony Webster and Nicholas J. White (eds.), The Empire in One City?: Liverpool’s
Inconvenient Imperial Past (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008),
100–123.
Kiwanulka, Semakula, “Introduction,” in: Apolo Kaggwa, Bassekabaka be Buganda
(The Kings of Buganda) [translated by Semakula Kiwanuka] (Nairobi: East African
Publishing House, 1971 [1901]), i–xxii.
Kodesh, Neil, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 98–130.
Kopytoff, Igor, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,”
in: Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91.
Low, D. Anthony, Fabrication of Empire: The British and the Uganda Kingdoms, 1890–1902
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Lush, A.J., “Kiganda Drums,” Uganda Journal 3 (1935), 7–20.
Mack, John (ed.), Africa: Arts and Cultures (London: British Museum Press, 2000).
Martin, Emma, “Fit for a King? The Significance of a Gift Exchange between the
Thirteenth Dalai Lama and King George V,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
25–1 (2015), 71–98.
Mauss, Marcel, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London:
Routledge, 1990).
Mukasa, Ham, Uganda’s Katikiro in England: Being the Official Account of His Visit to the
Coronation of His Majesty King Edward VII (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1904).
Nakazibwe, Venny, “Bark-Cloth of The Baganda People of Southern Uganda:
A Record of Continuity and Change from the Late Eighteenth Century
to the Early Twenty-First Century,” PhD dissertation, Middlesex University
(Middlesex, 2005).
Oehrl, Michael, “Beaded Coiffures of the Acholi, Dodinga, Latuka, and Related
Groups,” Tribal Art 80 (2016), 112–121.
Oliver, Roland, “The Royal Tombs of Buganda,” Uganda Journal 23 (1959), 124–133.
Otunnu, Ogenga, Crisis of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Uganda, 1890 to 1979
(Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
Posnansky, Merrick, The Uganda Museum Annual Report (Kampala, 1961).
Reid, Andrew, “Constructing History in Uganda,” Journal of African History 57–2
(2016), 195–207.
Reid, Richard, Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda (Athens OH: Ohio University
Press, 2003).
———, A History of Modern Uganda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2017).
Riggs, Christina, “Shouldering the Past: Photography, Archaeology, and Collective
Effort at the Tomb of Tutankhamun,” History of Science 55–3 (2017), 336–363.
Roscoe, John, “Kibuka, the War God of the Baganda,” Man 7 (1907), 161–166.
Rowe, John A., “Myth, Memoir and Moral Admonition: Luganda Historical Writing,
1893–1969,” Uganda Journal 33 (1969), 17–40.
———, “Mutesa and the Missionaries: Church and State in Pre-Colonial Buganda,”
in: Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (eds.), Christian Missionaries and
the State in the Third World (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2002), 52–65.
Thomas, Nicholas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in
the Pacific (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
Trowell, Margaret, and Klaus Wachsmann, Tribal Crafts of Uganda (London: Oxford
University Press, 1953).
Williams, F. Lukyn, “The Drum Wango,” Uganda Journal 6 (1938), 54–55.
Wingfield, Chris, Karen Jacobs and Chantal Knowles (eds.), Trophies, Relics and Curios?
Missionary Heritage from Africa and the Pacific (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2015).
Wintle, Claire, Colonial Collecting and Display: Encounters with Material Culture from
the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013).

18 Alison Bennett. Diplomatic Gifts

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

18 Alison Bennett. Diplomatic Gifts

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Diplomatic Gifts: Rethinking Colonial

Politics in Uganda through Objects

Résumé: Cet article examine les fondements matériels de la diplomatie politique

History in Africa, (2018), Page 1 of 28

© African Studies Association, 2018

alternative sur la vie institutionnelle en Ouganda en démontrant que les objets

Museum,” Anthropology Today 29–1 (2013), 8–12.

and material cultures as representative of the changing interactions, values,

3 Historians engaging in this work often cite the theoretical framework

57–2 (2016), 195–207.

inter-personal acts, gifts provide an important window on the affective

monial” form of exchange, and the commodity as a “modern” transaction employed

concept of “reciprocity,” though the Ganda were, in large “unrestricted

hitherto unexplored sources and examples demonstrate the complex strat-

Early Colonial Gift Exchange in Uganda

14 Dane Kennedy, “Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory,” Journal of

Imperial and Commonwealth History 24–3 (1996), 345–363.

Jackson from George Mackenzie on 10 November 1888.

1886.1 “Spear presented by Micreali of Kilimanjaro”

cognisance.”17 In other places they also represented masculine power and

17 Reid, Political Power, 219.

18 Venny Nakazibwe, “Bark-Cloth of The Baganda People of Southern Uganda:

Oxford University Press, 1953), 117.

(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 98–130.

Africa (New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 51.

ceremonies, offerings to guests, and in the game of mancala and were

26 British Museum, Af1902,0718.1–31, Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 69353

and RCIN 69875–69924.

“Waganda Young Princess’s Ceinture.”

“Tobacco Pouch Made of Cowhide by Princess Nakatschupi, Kodj, Unyoro.”

“Armlets of Black Hair Worn by Princesses, Ba Hima, Bunyoro,” and 1920.101.88,

What were the consequences if one made an error in their gifting?

In addition to this hoard of European weaponry and clothing, Lourdel

34 Rowe, “Mutesa and the Missionaries,” 62–63.

Ivory and leopard-skins were traditionally given to Acholi “chiefs” (rwots) as

40 Jackson, Early Days in East Africa, 276–277.

Uganda Protectorate,” The Geographical Journal 21–2 (1903), 162–164.

Journal 26–5 (1905), 481–487, 482.

Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 93.

45 Atkinson,Roots of Ethnicity, 94.

Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:

50 British Museum, Charles Delmé-Radcliffe Collection, Af1902,0714.197–200;

Af1902,0714.202–208; Af1902,0714.201, and Af1902,0714.205.

1979 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 120.

lie in this striking conjunction of the nineteenth-century military revolution and a

Gifts in Motion: Apolo Kaggwa in Britain

58 Apolo Kaggwa, Bassekabaka be Buganda (The Kings of Buganda) [translated by

Figure 1. British Museum, Af1902,0714.31, Coiffure. Acholi, Uganda. Late

Writing, 1893–1969,” Uganda Journal 33 (1969), 17–40.

His gifted ethnographic collections, however, have remained unanalyzed

62 Kiwanuka, “Introduction,” iii.

and RCIN 69875–69924, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of

impressions of their material surroundings. D.A. Low argues that Mukasa’s

In collecting and gifting ethnographic material, Kaggwa joined a network

Unfortunately, as with Kaggwa’s earlier publications, Uganda’s Katikiro

Figure 2. Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library,

Table 3. Gifts presented to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

tangible through objects in order to create a future identity. In both

The exchange of gifts played a key role in the functioning of modern

72 Nairobi National Museum, MUS/F/E/2/1–3 Ethnology 1962, Jean Brown

to R.H. Carcasson, 10 December 1962.

In Britain, museum records reveal that Kaggwa’s objects made a

Merrick Posnansky, The Uganda Museum Annual Report (Kampala, 1961), 8.

A.K. Mayanja to Vice-Chancellor, 2 November 1961, AA4/5/15.